


Memento Mori

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 07:19:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: It's about the living.





	Memento Mori

He takes the money David gives him and sleeps outside for the next three nights in a row.

There are places he could go, people he should speak to, but he keeps to himself, meandering, focusing only on basic needs. He’s so tired and everything – _everything_ – is different.

On the morning of the fourth day, he finds Curtis. Curtis doesn’t hesitate to drag him in, hugging him. Frank hasn’t showered in days and he knows damn well that Curt can tell, but he doesn’t say anything about it. They go to a diner and talk about nothing, edging away from heavy topics with a grace Frank doesn’t want to think too hard about.

“You need to think about what’s gonna make _you_ feel better,” Curtis tells him when he finally confesses that he’s unsure, that he’s lost. That he doesn’t know where to go now that the war is over. “Take a shower, man. Quit wallowing.”

He swats Curtis’s shoulder and tells him to shut up, but it’s kind and they both know what Curt means.

It’s a good talk, and he comes away from it feeling more focused, more together. He lets himself wander for a while, musing on the concept of _after_. What it means to move on.

He doesn’t expect to see David, when he unconsciously cruises the Lieberman’s neighborhood, but of course he does. He’s a block up the road from the house, but David’s figure is too familiar for him to miss him even at a glance. And he gets more than a glance, pulling the van over to the curb, turning the headlights off before they cut over David’s stoop.

David stands at the top of the steps, looking out at the street like he’s waiting for something he knows isn’t coming. He’s slouched more than usual, one arm wrapped around himself, half a hug, and the other held at his side, something glinting in his hand. Frank wonders if he’s drunk, and watches him turn back towards the door and decides both yes, he is, and also that he’s not _too_ drunk. And the ridiculous urge to get out of the van passes when David turns away and opens the door, tossing back the end of whatever’s in his glass as he crosses the threshold. Frank turns the engine back on and pulls away before it can come back.

He’s thinking about wants and how it’s difficult to have them as he drives around the neighborhood, letting himself get turned around in suburbia. He thinks about David telling him, “Remember, you will die.” He thinks about David telling him, “When we started this, it wasn’t about the dead. It was about the living.” He thinks about David, who betrayed him to save him and agonized over doing it because Frank had known too much betrayal already. He thinks about David, just a geek, just a spook, who’s heart was kind and open and good.

What possesses him to stop at the little house, with it’s rundown porch and it’s fenced in back yard, he couldn’t say. Only that he sees the for sale sign and it’s… a thought.

Something new. Something unattached.

Clean slate.

Moving on.

Days later, when he calls the real estate office handling the house, he almost – _almost_ – chickens out when the young woman on the other end tells him that the house is indeed still available.

It’s easier, moving into the place, to think of it as a safe house, rather than a home. He wants it so he can keep an eye on the Liebermans, that’s all. It’s just a place, a shelter, and shelter doesn’t _need_ to mean anything.

A month and a half later, laying on the floor (because he still hasn’t convinced himself to buy furniture) and drinking shitty beer, someone knocks on his door, and he freezes. Reaches for a gun, then cautiously decides against it, climbing to his feet and heading to the door empty handed. He disengages the deadbolt and leaves the chain in place, pulling the door open just enough to peer out, and goes very, very still for a minute.

Snow has fallen – it’s been falling all day, slow and heavy, building drifts against the house as the wind blows. Frank has not been able to motivate himself to clear the walk, so the path up to the house is punctuated by heavy, deep boot prints, and David stands, half-silhouetted on his porch in the headlights of his Prius.

“You gonna let me in?” He asks, like there’s any possible world where Frank doesn’t.

The door shut behind him, David stands there for a minute, just looking at him. And Frank, well, Frank looks anywhere else. There is a grave in him, deep and dark, and every time he looks at David the grave yawns wide, ready to swallow him up too. He’s scared, he realizes; he wants to hit something or run right past the other man and out into the frozen night, but he’s pinned under the assessing glare of David’s eyes, by the hurt and anger rolling off him in waves.

“What the fuck are you doing?” David finally demands, and Frank flinches, looking at him finally. It kills him, just a little, to see that there are tears welling up in those eyes, gleaming and then racing down his cheeks. He steps forward, into Frank’s space, and twists his fingers in Frank’s shirt. Frank does nothing to stop him. “You stupid sonnovabitch, what the _fuck_ , Frank?”

If asked _why_ , Frank would never in a million years be able to answer. It’s like asking a half drowned man, _why breathe_ when he’s offered fresh air – because it’s a need. Because he had to. He _had_ to step in closer, bringing his hands up to brush away those tears. And when David surges against him, kissing him? He _had_ to wrap his arms around that shivering frame, _had_ to kiss back.

David’s mouth tastes like whiskey, and Frank pulls away sharply.

“Are you _drunk_ ,” he demands, thinking of the car now sitting in his driveway, the headlights of which cut through the gap in the curtains.

David shakes his head and kisses him again. “Just a shot, just a shot when I figured out you were… I’m not drunk, Frank. It’s okay.”

They kiss again, falling into a desperate rhythm that has Frank breathless and blushing, pushing close as David sinks into him like he’s trying to _melt_.

“You were supposed to _get out_ , Frank, you were supposed to take the money and go somewhere you could start over.”

“I needed to keep an eye out for you,” he whispers, and the words come slow and awkward, clumsy to his own ear. “I couldn’t just… I had to be here.”

 _I couldn’t leave you. I didn’t want to_. These are the words that won’t come.

“Why… why didn’t you at least...”

There they are again, David close to crying and Frank holding him, careful, cradled close where he can be sure nothing in the world will ever harm him. David’s fingers clench and relax against Frank’s shirt, like he wants to shake him, wants to hit him, wants to tear into him. Frank understands, understands the idea of caring so much you want to pummel the other person for making you feel so much. It’s overwhelming, and for men who agreed to disregard feelings early in their partnership, they sure are in deep with one another now.

“You could have told me,” David says, voice soft and trembling. “You could have come _home_.”

Frank doesn’t think he will ever have the words to explain to David how terrifying the idea of _having_ a home is to him anymore. A home, he’s learned, is a thing that can be broken, can be stolen away. It’s a place that comforts and coddles you in one moment and then wraps you in old agony in the next. The idea of being part of a group, of _belonging_ with someone else, it’s petrifying.

“Didn’t… I don’t want to hurt you,” He says instead, and that will have to do for now.

David laughs, looking at him fondly but like he’s being intentionally thick. “So don’t,” he says, like it’s that simple, and then they’re kissing again, and David is moaning into the exchange like he needs it to survive.

He can’t get over the lank softness of this man, can’t take his hands of him now that he’s started. David pushes and Frank lets himself be moved. He closes his fingers on David’s hips and David hisses through his teeth, chuckling when Frank immediately relaxes his hold. He’s not used to letting anyone close, not used to touching without pain, but he cannot, will not, hurt this man.

Somehow they end up on the floor, Frank sprawled on his back, David straddling his middle, curled over him, touching, kissing; David’s hands are everywhere, running over his chest and shoulders and over his arms, and Frank understands that too. This isn’t about sex, it’s about physicality. It’s about proving they’re alive, to himself and to Frank. Proving that Frank is really here, really real.

Frank remembers Maria touching him much the same way when he’d first come home, and god, that hurts. Hurts his heart, but maybe not as bad as it should, and he doesn’t know if that means he’s healing or not. He doesn’t even know anymore if healing is a good thing – without the pain, he’s not sure he knows how to define himself anymore.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until David shushes him, sitting back to brush the tears away as they fall, to give Frank space. “We don’t have to, we don’t have to do anything, it’s okay, hey, hey, everything is okay,” he says, and _that’s_ a lie, but it’s a sweet one, a well meaning one.

“What about, uh,” he sniffs, hates how watery it sounds, the tears obvious in the gravel of his voice, “What about Sarah?”

David grins, and it’s beautiful, it’s an expression of so much fondness and love that Frank has to smile too, like he’s overwhelmed by the brilliance of it. “Yeah,” David says, smoothing his hand over Frank’s cheek, wiping away the last of the tear tracks. “She knows. She’s wants you to come home too, Frank. It’s okay.”

There’s no way for Frank to believe that, that things are really okay, not yet. But he thinks he can believe that there’s a possibility that things _might become_ okay.

So he lets his hand, gentle, always gentle with this man, brush against David’s face, so different from Maria’s, but similar too, in the way David looks at him, like he’s a relief and a wonder; he grips the back of David’s neck and draws him down and smothers his thoughts in the reality of touch. David is not Maria, and he will never fill the wound that runs all through Frank from her loss. But the love is real, and he needs it.

What they end up doing on the floor, which is hard and cold and not exactly the ideal place, is sloppy and needy and rough. It’s months of pent up frustration, it’s finally allowing something that both had wanted and neither had dared address. Its fast and dirty and satisfying, David’s breath on Frank’s neck rabbit-quick and sharp as they grind together, shirtless, their pants hitched low. Frank thinks he’s got the feel of the hardwood against his back memorized, the way it digs and drags with every thrust and roll of David’s hips.

It’s perfectly natural, perfectly normal to cede control to David. David only wants what’s best for Frank, only wants him to feel good, and he trusts that. God help him, he really does. So he lays back and goes along for the ride, trying to keep quiet until that becomes impossible. David won’t fuck him proper – not this time, he says, like he knows there will be others – because they don’t have anything to ease the way and he claims spit isn’t enough.

But he wraps his hands, long tapered fingers put to astonishingly good use, around both their cocks, grinding down against Frank and thrusting into his fist. When Frank tentatively places his hand, bigger and rougher than David’s, over David’s fingers and _squeezes_ , the noise that escapes them both is wicked, needy, and just like that they’re working together, grinding and thrusting and moaning eager, meaningless words. Frank, unsurprisingly, comes first, and has to press his free hand over his face to force back the whimper that threatens when David continues to pump them through his orgasm, leaving him burning, over sensitive, until at last he finds his own release.

The light from the Prius is still shining through the window, gently back-lighting David when he sits back, breathing heavily. He looks like he’s run a few hard miles, his cheeks red and his hair tousled, skinny chest heaving. And he laughs, looking down at Frank, curling over him to kiss lips, his cheek, his brow.

“Next time we’re doing this at my place,” he says, rocking back onto his feet and making a face at the mess on his hands. Frank had it worse; there were splatters of come across his stomach and chest. He grabbed his discarded shirt, a cheap tank top that was really at the end of it’s lifespan anyway, and wiped himself off, grinning lopsidedly at David’s noise of revulsion when the shirt was offered to him.

He takes it anyway, grimacing as he wipes his hands off and then balls it up, holding it like he doesn’t know what to do next. Frank thinks about calling him out on the ‘next time’ comment, on presuming this will happen again, but he’s had enough of lying to himself for a while. He wants it to happen again – he wants _more_ to happen. And it’s been so long since he felt that way in any real capacity about anyone; an affection that wasn’t nebulous and purposefully platonic. In a weird way, it’s a sort of relief, to realize he _can_ feel that way still.

They take turns washing up in the bathroom, and Frank comes out to David standing in center of the living room, staring down at the empty beer bottles and the book that Frank had been reading.

“You’ve gotta get some furniture in here, man. You bought a house and you’re sleeping on the _floor_? C’mon.”

“There’s a camp bed in the bedroom,” Frank says absently, and narrows his eyes when David laughs.

“Again – you bought a _house_ and you’re sleeping on a _camp bed_. Frank, seriously, you need – you _gotta_ take care of yourself.” There’s an edge to his voice again, a brittleness that twists Frank’s heart. “You deserve nice things, Frank. Like, I dunno, a fuckin’ _bed_. A couch? Maybe a place to put your shit that’s not a duffle bag?”

Frank looks away and grunts out a noise, frowning, and David raises his arms, pacifying.

“Will you come back with me tonight?” He says, and that catches Frank off guard. David’s hands are still up, fingers spread as if to prove his innocent intent. “Just so I know you’re sleeping on something that’s not gonna break your back for once, huh?”

Frank licks his lips and looks away, huffing a sigh. He wants to say yes. He wants, just as much, to say no. Because watching them was one thing, keeping his distance and making sure they stayed safe was alright, but to step foot in that house, to involve himself directly – now that was another matter. That was dangerous, because _he_ was.

“ _Please_ , Frank. C’mon. _Please_.”

 _When we started this, it was about the living_.

_Quit wallowing._

_Remember – you will die_.

So he goes, digging out a fresh shirt and shrugging on a coat. David is bundled in boots and a thick coat and gloves and a scarf and Frank almost laughs at him because they’re _three blocks away from his house_ it wasn’t like he was going to freeze even if he had to walk. But then David pulls out a scarf from his pocket and its plush and soft and indulgent when he steps in close and wordlessly puts it around Frank’s neck, and Frank suddenly has no words, no jibes to make. He just follows David out into the dark, locking the house up behind him, and gets in the car.

“The kids’re in bed. I dunno if Sarah will still be up, but – just. Be here in the morning?” The way David asks is painful, not just because its clear even as he makes the request that he doesn’t expect it to be fulfilled but because Frank _deserves_ that lack of trust. They sit in the driveway for a minute, in the dark, in the cold, breath puffing in the air because three blocks wasn’t enough to get the heat running. It really is cold.

But David doesn’t move to get out of the car until Frank finally nods. He’ll stay, just for the night. He’ll stay, and he’ll face them all in the morning.

He has a hard time sleeping on that soft, comfortable couch, and it’s got nothing to do with the cushy pillow David gives him or the plush, indulgent warmth of the blanket he drapes over Frank. He’s thinking about wants and how they creep up on you. He’s thinking about needs, what each person in the world needs to survive, and if affection – not love, not desire, but honest affection – is one of those needs. He’s thinking about his children, dead and buried, and sleeping upstairs.

Eventually, he succumbs, and at the very least there are no dreams.

He wakes to the sound of screaming, eyes flashing open as he sits up, hand reaching for a weapon that’s not there right before a tiny body slams into his.

It’s just Leo, of course it is, and his brain catches up to that when his arms instinctively close around her, her arms around his neck and her face buried against his shoulder. He has to fight to keep his grip loose, but two seconds later there’s another body clinging to him, and he can only laugh. Zach hugs him and Leo, and Frank has to maneuver awkwardly to extract his arm from between the two bodies so he can pat at Zach’s shoulder.

“C’mon guys, get off him,” Comes David’s tired voice from the stairs, but it’s fond, amused as he shuffles past, heading into the kitchen. His hair stands in every direction, and he’s wearing a soft, new robe – still silver, still too loose in the arms, but sporting none of the bloodstains the one Frank was used to had. “C’mon. S’breakfast time.”

“Yeah, go on,” and that’s Sarah, standing on the stairs, looking down at them with one hand raised to partially hide the smile on her face. “Go help Dad.”

By some miracle the kids actually obey, letting Frank loose and running off to go chatter at David a million questions – When had Frank gotten there, where had he come from, was he staying, how long was he staying –before the tears rise in Frank’s eyes. He’s shoving them away with the heels of his hands, trying to play it off as rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but when Sarah envelops him in a hug of her own, he knows she knows. She holds his face against her shoulder, curled over him as he sits, and combs her fingers through his hair.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” she says when she pulls away, smiling gently. And it’s all so much, too much, it’s impossibly fond and kind and good, things he knows he doesn’t deserve, but god if he doesn’t crave them now that he’s had a taste.

They have pancakes for breakfast, bacon. The Liebermans don’t keep kosher, evidently, but David makes coffee that’s stronger, richer than anything he’d made in the power station, and Frank drinks three cups. It’s all so domestic, so pleasant, and Frank finds that, bizarrely, he doesn’t feel like an intruder here. He doesn’t even feel like a guest.

He feels like he belongs, and it’s terrifying. It’s wonderful.

They ask him questions, but they’re easy. They don’t ask him where he’s been, they don’t ask why he didn’t come back with David in the first place, they don’t ask how long he’ll stay. They just seem to be happy that he’s here now.

They tell him they’re going to some park to sledding. He doesn’t recognize the name, but Zach and Leo talk over each other describing the hills and the ice rink on the property and the times before that they’ve gone, and it’s so familiar.

It’s the easiest thing in the world, when Sarah suggests he join them, to say yes. David’s smile is so relieved and so happy. He wears the scarf David put on him the night before, and realizes he has no intention of giving it back.

It becomes a kind of habit, after that; he’ll isolate for a few days, keeping distance and watching them in passing, not exactly hiding but not interacting with anyone beyond a nod and a few passing words. Then David shows up, usually in the evening, to drag him three blocks over for dinner, a movie, and convinces him to sleep there, in the center of the Lieberman’s home, where he will wake to be hugged and chattered at, where he has no choice but to smile and relax into their routine.

David shows up one morning in defiance of this pattern and makes Frank drive to a furniture store. He bullies him into it with a lecture that’s both obviously from the cuff and passionately felt, and Frank caves, agrees to go. David insists he has to accompany him, to ensure he doesn’t just buy the cheapest thing he finds – which, admittedly, was the plan.

That’s how he ends up with a fully furnished house – not just a couch and a bed to sleep on, but a table to eat at, an easy chair David likes to lay across the arms of rather than recline in normally, a coffee table he puts his feet on and Sarah, when she catches him, slaps him on the shin to make him stop, despite it being his.

How he ends up with Molly, a bullypit he dotes on, well – that’s entirely Leo and Zach’s doing.

He drives them to and from school sometimes, an arrangement that starts out with practical roots – Sarah had to work early and David was sick, so the kids would otherwise have been dropped off obscenely early or would have had to take the bus, which neither of them enjoyed. Frank had volunteered, and told them all he would drive them whenever it was needed. This arrangement somehow became a regular event.

Zach wanted a pet, Leo specifically wanted a dog, and David, while he liked the idea, put his foot down that they simply didn’t have the yard space to give a dog sufficient care. Sarah agreed, and seemed relieved for the excuse. Somehow – a lot of life with the Lieberman’s is vague in it’s connections, tenuous in a familiar way, the way things just sort of happen, one to the next, without planning – _somehow_ this leads to regular visits when Frank is driving the kids home from school to a local shelter, where they can at least spend time around the animals.

Molly is brought in one day while they’re visiting, a scarred, underweight, frightened thing. The man who brings her says he found her wandering the highway, and the dog is swept away, but not before her dark eyes meet Frank’s, scared and lost and tired. Leo catches the way Frank is watching the dog, and elbows Zach. They spend an hour talking about how sweet the dog had looked, rather than doing their homework. Frank tells them he’ll check back in on the dog if they’ll focus on getting their homework finished before their mom gets home.

Of course, he can’t _not_ go after telling them he would. When he asks after the dog, several days later, the staff offers to let him meet her, and it’s pretty much all over after that. Molly is painfully shy but sweet and loving once she settles with him. She knows several commands and is house trained, and she badly needs a handler, but most people are simply uninterested in an older dog, especially a pit-mix. That’s all the justification Frank needs to bring her home, and then – well would you look at that. The house, it’s… well. With Molly to come back to and a bed to sleep in, a kitchen he feels obligated to keep stocked with food because why else should he be paying for the electricity to power the fridge, a living room he entertains David’s family in sometimes – all the sudden, it’s not just a house. It’s home.

He has a home.

He blames David for that. Blaming is easier than thanking.

Eventually, sometime in April, he finds work. Another construction job; it suits him, suits his temperament and need for distracting physicality.

David and Sarah have him over several times a week; he has the Liebermans over on the odd nights they don’t call him. A day without seeing them is rare, and he likes that. Sometimes he sleeps over there, and usually when he does it’s not on the couch. David and Sarah’s bed is decadently large, and the three of them fit in it just fine. Home is three blocks away, with his dog and his own bed, but sometimes home is here, too.

At first he’s careful to get up early and slide out from between them, disengaging from David’s tendency to cling and moving slow so as not to disturb Sarah, and move to the couch or head out all together before the kids wake up. Eventually, he figures out that it’s unnecessary – the kids don’t know _exactly_ what’s going on, but they know enough, and it doesn’t bother them.

Out there, he’s Pete again. Pete Castiglione, a vet, a construction worker, a quiet man who liked coffee and kept to himself when he could, who paid in cash and preferred morning shifts. He was doing the therapy thing with Curtis, every week now, opening up in the circle, and sometimes he could even meet the other vet’s eyes.

When he’s home, though, he’s _known_. He is Frank, just Frank, and he is loved. He loves in return, and god – _god_ but it’s good. It’s about the living, it’s about the living.

There are still nightmares, and there are still bad days. He and David both wring themselves raw worrying over the consequences of his leaving Billy alive, even if he was brain damaged and comatose. There was a chance he would wake, and he knew who the Lieberman’s were, so there was always a chance he would hurt them – for the sake of hurting them, if not just to get to Frank.

For the most part, though, things are… things are peaceful. He doesn’t breakdown. He hurts sometimes, but he copes – and he copes without needing to kill someone for a little peace.

It occurs to him one morning – he’s making pancakes and David is teasing Sarah about the fancy syrup she’s putting on the table and Zach and Leo are laughing because Sarah doesn’t have to say a damn word, she can shut her husband up with a single look, and Molly is laying at his feet and looking up at him expectantly, waiting for scraps he really shouldn’t let her have – and it occurs to him that this is his family. This is part of him, and he is part of them, and it _works_. It works because they all want it to work, because they all love each other, and it’s so good that for a moment his hand clenches so hard on the spatula’s handle that it hurts. His back is to everyone else and their laughter and banter doesn’t hitch or pause at all, so that’s fine – no one saw, no one knows. He rides out the powerful tangle of emotion with mindful attention to his cooking, and knows Curt would be proud.

He doesn’t say he loves them, but he shows it in everything he does. He’s working up to it, working up to externalizing the things he feels so deeply. This is his family, and he won’t let anything happen to them this time. He has a second chance and he will do it right this time.

One of the best, most comforting things about their arrangement is that he never has to sleep alone if he doesn’t want, and he rarely wants. There’s something dreadfully comforting about sleeping with another body pressed close, something he can hold on to that will hold him in return. David shows affection through touch, and now that he’s allowed, he constantly has his hands on Frank. Sarah is more reserved but no less passionate, and she enjoys sleeping with her head pillowed on his arm, keeping him still and close and making it impossible for him to slip away in the night without waking her up.

He loves it. He loves them.

So they’re sitting down for dinner one night – Sarah’s cooking, so David and Frank set the table and the kids wrap up homework so everyone can sit down together. They eat together almost every night now, and it just feels right. The table’s not crowded, and it feels – it just feels normal, and there’s a simple pleasure in that, in things like this becoming mundane again. In normal not being gas-station food or cheap diner breakfasts for supper, but instead home cooking shared with people who really, honestly want him there with them.

Something crashes in the kitchen and the laughter cuts off as everyone turns to look at Sarah. Frank meets her eyes as her skin darkens and breaks. He’s on his feet and she’s crumbling, blowing apart in the barest breeze. Leo screams, and Frank’s head snaps back to the table, away from the horror of Sarah turning to dust, to look at his little girl and see – “no, no, no” – her skin going dull, her outstretched hand crumbling to ash as she reaches for – “no, no, no” – David, who sits in stunned shock, looking at his own crumbling hands and then up at Frank, those piercing eyes pleading in a way they never had before, and he breathes the softest curse, almost a laugh, before his face is gone and Frank looks across the table and there’s Zach – “no, no, no, wait, no” with his hands pressed flat to the table, all eyes as he watches, helpless, alone in the way the solemn child often seems to be, and slowly falls apart.

Two minutes pass before Frank realizes he’s talking, _pleading_ with the empty room, negating what he’s seen, begging it not to be true. He silences himself. Tries in vain to wake up, but there’s nothing to wake from – and this wasn’t the kind of thing he dreamed of anyway. If this were a dream, there’d be blood, there’d be some _logic_ to the happening. When he opens his eyes, he’s alone. Some trick of the breeze stirs the ashy dust in the air, drawing it toward him so his dark clothes are filmed with a fine coating of it, so he’s _breathing_ – he gags and covers his mouth and nose, struggling.

The dust – the dust which is his _family_ – is so thick now, floating aimless in the air, directionless as the breeze from the open door settles again. There are piles around the table and on the kitchen floor, piles of dust that he can identify by location but by no other factor as his – “oh god.”

Everyone is gone. He’s staring, shell-shocked, at his own hands, waiting for them to break down into powder, to flake and blow away with his breath. Certainly he can’t be exempt from this – not when it’s taken everyone else. Distantly he hears a crash, then a car alarm. Dogs are barking. Someone is screaming. It’s not him; he is silent.

He’s waiting.

And it never happens.

When he feels a cold, wet something press against his ankle he jumps, startled, whipping around to find the threat, something – but it’s only Molly. Molly, looking scared, shivering, but whole. Molly is still here and he clings to that as he goes through the process of finding her leash, putting it on her. They need to leave the house. He can’t be here, he can’t keep – the dust is in the air, the dust is _them_ and he can’t hold his breath so he’s _breathing_ –

Molly whines when he opens the front door, resisting going outside like she knows something he doesn’t, but she follows him everywhere, and trusts him. He looks back into the house in time to see the opening of the door as caused a shift in the air pressure, making the think dust in the dining room riot. His family, intermingled in the air – he gags again, chokes, and steps away, leaving the door open behind him in his haste.

Two blocks away, he collapses.

 _Memento mori_ , he hears David explain to him, deep in his head, in his memory. _You will die._

Except it’s never him that dies.

 _For the living, it was for the living, the living_.

Someone has done something monumentally stupid, and whether it was intentional or not, they’ve hurt his family. They’ve _taken_ from him.

_For the living, memento mori_

He pulls out his phone, the very same one David left for him so long ago now, and he calls Curt. There is no answer, and his fingers leave dusty prints where the brush the numbers. He chokes out something approximate to ‘Call me ASAP please’, but he doesn’t think Curtis is in a way to make phone calls.

He climbs to his feet and Molly follows, whining low in her throat, and together they make it back to the little house with the rundown porch and fenced in yard, the house that’s his, the place that no longer feels like any kind of home. What is home? Home is a place strangers can creep into and take everything. So Frank wants nothing. He wants to find whoever caused this and carve them open, he wants to beat them to death with his hands. He can’t stop seeing David’s face, he’s pleading eyes, alive and aware until they disappeared. His hands are dark with ash and he wants to wash them but he can’t. He’s filling a duffle bag with necessities; guns, his Ka-Bar, a few changes of clothes, and food for Molly.

The evening is awash with horror, shell-shocked survivors wandering out into the streets, people stumbling away from crashed cars. There are fires that need putting out, confusion and fear that needs allaying, but he is not for that. He is no kind of hero, no kind of solace.

No, he is good at one thing, and he’s been denying it since that night in the park, when he let Billy leave breathing.

He is going to find whoever caused this, and he’s going to kill them. However many there are, however strong they are, Frank will tear himself apart before he rests even a moment. Things like this don’t just happen – in a world filled with super powered assholes running around in spandex and claiming to be some kind of salvation, there are just as many super powered assholes hiding behind masks and calling themselves the new monsters.

Well, Frank knows monsters, and he knows they can die.

_Memento mori._

He knows he can put them down.

 

 _You will die_.

 

He can only hope.


End file.
